


Preventative Measures

by icarus_chained



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Jack the Ripper - Freeform, Murder, Private Wars, Revenge, Vampires, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-23
Updated: 2012-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-05 21:43:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 2x02. John and Nikola destroy the Cabal, and John sees a side of Nikola he hadn't, before. </p>
<p>VIOLENCE. Really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Preventative Measures

"I'm coming with you."

Tesla stepped from the shadows at the Sanctuary gate, blocking John's path out of the EM field and into the wider world. Into the hunting grounds. The vampire moved, fearless and cold, into his way.

"Not now," John managed, feeling his voice tremble on the edge of shearing, on the edge of a snarl of rage. Feeling the hate bubbling inside him, the rich, red-black darkness gleaming in his chest. Feeling the need, the old, sweet curl in his veins that pushed him to the hunt, that drowned him in the dark, and now he had cause. As never before, he had cause. With that thrumming in his heart, he hadn't _time_. Not for Tesla. Not for anyone.

He had monsters to hunt. He had lambs to draw to the slaughter, and show them the folly of playing games with Jack the Ripper.

"Yes, now!" Tesla snapped, hand flashing up, and John distantly recognised that the hand was clawed. Distantly recognised that the vampire, the monster, was straining as close beneath Tesla's skin as it was beneath his own. "I'm coming with you, Johnny, and if you'll calm down for one second, you'll realise why you should let me!"

John turned his head, let it roll towards Tesla in a dark little slide, and felt his mouth curve into a sneer. Let the darkness shine in his eyes, for the vampire to see. "You know what I'm going to do," he said, soft and precise, near-gentle. "You know why. This isn't for science, Tesla. This isn't for your precious race. This is for my _daughter_ , this is paying murder with murder, and I will not stop for your sensibilities!" He snarled, fought his voice back down from a roar, and glared at the silent figure in his way. "You don't want any part of this, and I don't want any part of you. Get out of my way."

"... no," Tesla answered, very, very quietly. "No," he said, stepping forward from the shadows. Except he couldn't, not quite. Because the shadows came with him, glittered in his hooded eyes, and the light shone on black claws like knives in the dark. "No," said the vampire, and John stared.

"They've hunted me for decades," Tesla went on, calm and bright, that quick-sly grin. "They've watched me, and more importantly, I've watched them. I can help you, Johnny. I can help you find them, I can help you get inside their facilities, and when it comes to it, I can help you kill them. I can help you make them pay. I won't stop you. I won't slow you down. I will _help_ you, every step of the way, and when we're through the Cabal will be so much shattered waste." He smiled, slick and dark. "And you want that too much to say no, Johnny. You want that too much to make me stay. Just admit it, and lets get on with the slaughter, shall we?"

John tilted his head, tasting the air between them as he frowned. As he searched Tesla's expression, and found such familiar darkness there. Found such familiar hate. He frowned. "Tell me why," he said, very quietly, listening to the hate bubble inside him. "Tell me why you want to."

Tesla looked away, glanced down to study the shine of light along his claws, something moving behind his eyes. Some slow, sluggish leviathan, drifting slowly to the surface, and John watched it hungrily, in fascination, in some strange touch of kinship. Then Tesla shoved it down, shoved it away, and looked back up at John with a shrug and a smile, waving the question aside.

"It's been a long century, John," he said, with a strange little twitch of a grin. "The Cabal have just pushed the wrong button, that's all. There are only so many times I will stand to be attacked, before I'm pushed to return the favour. Now." He spread his hands, cocked a smug eyebrow. "Is that good enough, or shall we stand here all day?"

And the hate was burning up, too much to bear, and the blood was calling John to the hunt more loudly than it had in years, in decades, and behind him Helen mourned their daughter, their _daughter_ , Ashley, and John had no time to waste. No time to care. If Tesla failed later, if Tesla shied away, then John would leave him where he stood, and finish on his own. One way or another, the Cabal would pay, and nothing Tesla did would change that.

He stepped close, reaching up to rest one hand on Tesla's shoulder in command, not question, and grinned the Ripper's grin, a knife-flash in the dark, as he backed the vampire beyond the gates, beyond the cage of the EM fields, and into the hunt.

"Do be sure to keep up, old boy," he whispered, smiling in the shadows, and some darkness within him delighted in the flash of a vampire's teeth that answered.

\---

It wasn't until the first facility fell that John understood. It wasn't until the screaming had died down, until the fires crackled savagely in the silent darkness, until the blood slid soft as a lover over his hands as he looked up, that John understood just how much Tesla could keep up. Just how far the vampire could go.

Electricity arced through the air, fitful snaps and cracks of false lightning that lit the world in blue and painted red blood black. Tesla'd shorted out their main generators in short order, slipped inside their defenses with John a deadly shadow at his back, and cut down their EM shield before they even knew what was happening. It wasn't a good idea to play games with someone who knew what they were doing. It wasn't a good idea to depend on technology to save you when the one hunting you played in lightning like a child in rain.

And then, with the shield down and the field open for John, the vampire had stood aside with a little smile, and bowed over clawed hands to let the Ripper take the stage. "Interpersonal violence was never my strongest suit," he'd demurred, grinning around his teeth. "Allow me to introduce my much more talented colleague ..."

And John had hunted. Had tasted blood for blood, with Ashley's name in his throat, wondering with every strike if this scientist had been one of those who poisoned her, if this craven coward had been one of those who _touched_ her, who forced her, who made her something she'd never been meant to be ... He remembered her eyes, fading from gold to blue as his sword pierced her chest, remembered her blonde hair flying, remembered the racking sobs that spilled from Helen's mouth when it was done. He _remembered_ , remembered with every bright flash of the knife and dark splatter against his face. With every scream.

He was Jack the Ripper. He was John Druitt, Bloody Jack, and they had taken his daughter from him. They had used her, and changed her, and stolen her from him, and they would pay the _price_.

It was only when it was done, only when he looked up from the ruins of the Cabal to see Tesla, wreathed in lightning, lowering a body almost gently to the ground, that he remembered he had not come here alone. That he realised he had never, in all the stark-clear moments of this fight, never once been alone.

Tesla looked up at him. The vampire, dark and savage, drowned in blood, but there was nothing inhuman about him in that moment. Nothing unfamiliar. Tesla looked at him, and John could _see_ him, see that self-same scientist that had annoyed him for more than a century, could see the man clear as daylight beneath the monster's skin. The leviathan floating behind his eyes, the slow dark thing that waved at John, was not the vampire. It was the _man_.

"Why?" he asked, softly in the butcher's yard, in the monster's hunting ground. "Why?" he asked, to a man he'd never thought had known savagery.

"I thought peace would break out," Tesla answered, after a minute. Without explanation. Slow, quiet. Watching the blood slide from his claws. "I really did, John. I thought science could force ... could force some measure of peace. But it can't. It can't."

He looked up at John, an odd, soft smile on his face, the bright gleam in his eyes that John remembered from those distant days at school, that rush of discovery. The leviathan uncurled with a flash of knowledge, a quiet 'ah-hah!', and Tesla smiled at him.

"You were there for the war, weren't you, Johnny?" he asked, musingly. "I'm sure James mentioned something about it. I tried to stop it, you know. I really did. But science can only do so much, and people ... Well. People will always let you down." A small shrug, a little smile. "I went home, after that. I went home, to do my bit, and I saw ..."

He stopped. Shook his head, standing back from the corpse at his feet. Pulled a handkerchief from his pocket while John watched him in bemusement, cleaning his hands almost automatically, shredding the cloth on his claws. Jack the Ripper watched him. Jack the Ripper was silent.

"They don't stop until you stop them," Tesla said at last. Looking up at John from the ruins of the Cabal, with blood on his cheek and a calm, soft darkness in his eyes. "They destroyed the vampires, and all their science couldn't save them. They destroyed ... they ran over all of Europe, drove it into the dust, and I couldn't stop them. They came for Helen, for the Sanctuary, for me, and science ..." His face twitched, tried to shape itself into a smile, failed. "My people. Again and again, John. My people. They don't stop, until you stop them. They don't stop, until you show them why they should. And I ..."

He smiled, raised one clawed hand in an ironic little salute, and John found himself raising his knife in echo. Raising his blade in answer. Remembering Ashley, with his sword through her chest. Remembering Helen, crying on the floor. Remembering the arrogance of the Cabal, to believe they had the right, to believe they could touch what was his without cost, to believe they could challenge Jack the Ripper and emerge unscathed. 

"And we can show them," he finished softly. Two men, two monsters, drowned in blood, with the names and memories of those they'd lost crowding behind their eyes, and he smiled at Tesla. At his old rival. "Oh, yes. We can show them why they should."

Tesla grinned, the flash of a vampire's teeth in the dark, and spread clawed hands in an elegant little bow. "There are more of them left," he said, and offered John his arm with a cavalier little smile, as if asking him to dance. "Shall we?"

"... Yes," Jack the Ripper answered, and took it with a smile. "I think we shall."


End file.
